


Stay Safe

by NotLaura



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-23 15:19:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6120718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotLaura/pseuds/NotLaura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not everyone meets their soulmate. The mark isn’t a promise, it’s a possibility. There’s no science to it, no explanation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stay Safe

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by a tumblr post, turning the "soulmate's first words" trope around.

Carol is three months into her marriage when she realizes there’s no way Ed is her soulmate.

It isn’t the sting of his palm or the contempt in his eyes. It isn’t the slurred apologies or clumsy assurances that it won’t happen again.

She lays awake one night, curled on her side, staring at the faint letters on her wrist and realizes she can’t imagine him ever saying those words.

That night, she cries for something she fears she will never have.

\--

All told, soulmarks are a pretty unfair system.

Everyone has one, words etched faintly into skin. The final words your soulmate will say to you, the last thing you will hear from them. Printed like invisible ink, and only you can see. Because life isn’t uncertain enough, there has to be this promise of true love that can only be known when it’s lost.

Couples share their words in whispers, hoping to somehow beat the system, to  know  before it’s too late.

It’s always too late.

\--

Maybe it’s because the world is ending, maybe it’s because there’s death all around them, but the fireside conversation is tinged with morbidity. Sophia is bundled at her side, and Carol holds her arms around her tiny shoulders as Dale speaks.

“She never told me her words,” he tells them, the voice of a wistful storyteller. “Irma was superstitious about it, but I saw it in her eyes the day she died. I told her I loved her, I told her I would always be with her, and then I told her I needed to use the restroom.” His smile is sardonic, but across the fire it’s easy to see there’s nothing but loving memory in his eyes. “She told me she loved me too, and to stop dawdling and go take a piss. I knew then we were saying goodbye.”

“Did that make it any easier?” Amy asks him, clearly still swept up in the romance of the soulmark.

“I knew the moment I met her that Irma was the love of my life, and we both knew she wasn’t going to get any better. It didn’t make anything easier, but it was… a comfort, to know our hearts had lead us true.”

“You spent your whole life wondering why your soulmate would be telling you to go take a piss?” Shane snorts, and the sound unsettles Carol in a way she can’t quite name. “I think it’s all crap, made up by the greeting card companies and such. Who’s to say anyone tells the truth about their words anyway?”

On Carol’s other side, Andrea laughs along with Shane, but it’s less biting. “I’ve lost track of how many terrible soulmark pick up lines I’ve heard. ‘Hey baby, my name’s Jason, you probably recognize it from your soulmark since you’re going to go out screaming it.’”

Her story lightens the mood, but Carol rubs at her wrist, wondering if she’s missed the chance to hear the two words printed there.

\--

Not everyone meets their soulmate. The mark isn’t a promise, it’s a possibility. There’s no science to it, no explanation. The sociology of the soulmark has been studied for years, but no conclusions are drawn.

When all data relies on the brutal honesty of the participants, it’s just too impossible to say.

\--

In this new world, it’s impossible to keep your words to yourself. Carol sees it around camp, the look someone will get when someone else says something to them. It’s a look that tells you whatever innocuous thing has been said is scrawled on someone’s body.

Briefly, she wonders if the dead walking around will bring out something new in Ed, something protective, something she wishes was buried in the depths of whatever soul he might have.

Ed dies without saying the words Carol holds so closely, and it’s a relief in more ways than she can count. He wrote on her skin with bruises. They will fade.

The eight letters on her wrist will not.

\--

After the farm, when there’s a hole in her heart in the shape of her daughter, Carol thinks of the words as a promise to her little girl. She’s resigned herself to not hearing them, but she does her best to live them.

On her best days, she wonders if that makes her her own soulmate.

On her worst, she knows that she has to be.

\--

In the dead of winter, curled up together in an abandoned motel, Lori confesses to Carol.

“When Rick was in his coma, I wasn’t afraid” she whispers into the cold air, her voice too quiet to wake up anyone else. “He hadn’t said the words, and I was so sure that no matter our troubles, he was it for me. I told myself every night that he would wake up because he hadn’t said them yet.”

Carol smoothes a hand down her friends hair, unable to dislodge the words in her throat.

“They’re on my calf, printed up the length of it.” Lori shifts her leg, even though Carol would be unable to see them if she looked. “Right there, like a promise, it says: ‘We're awful grateful for what you did’.” Lori snorts, but there’s more grief in it than anything else. “When Shane said he was dead, it was like everything I thought I knew about myself had shattered… I was just so  sure that Rick and I…” She sighs, falling quiet.

“No one blames you, Lori.”

“Rick does.”

Carol doesn’t have a comeback for that.

\--

At the prison, Lori comes into the cell block looking equal parts shocked and resigned. She curls up on the bunk, taking Carol’s hand in hers.

“Promise me you’ll look after Carl.”

“Of course I will,” Carol’s eyes hold a question, but her tone is nothing but conviction.

Later, in the silence of the night, Lori whispers.

“He’s awful grateful for what I did.”

Carol’s chills have nothing to do with the cold concrete that surrounds them.

\--

She’s in a cell, her life trickling away and all she can do is wordlessly mouth the words over and over. If she says them enough, maybe she can keep them true. Maybe she won’t die here having never known the touch of her true love.

Maybe she’ll save her own life, somehow.

\--

Carol stares into the baby’s eyes, her heart clenching for the friends she’s lost, but still filled with awe at this tiny miracle she holds. Lori gave her life for this child, and Carol isn’t about to let that be in vain. Here, behind the walls of this prison, she thinks they could make a life, make a new world for Carl and for this little one… The others will go get Glenn and Maggie back, and then there can be a new start, out of reach from the monsters that walk the Earth.

For the first time since Sophia died, Carol feels hope.

She’s lost in the softness of the baby’s skin, the tininess of her hand against her arm, the infinite possibilities open to the young. She doesn’t hear Daryl’s footfalls, but his presence is unmistakable at her side.

He isn’t her savior, but Carol’s heart warms at the role he played.

“Stay safe.”

She replies on instinct, feeling warm all over and blessed in ways she never thought she would again. “Nine lives, remember?”

And then her world stops spinning, the words etched into her wrist feeling like a burn against her skin as Carol watches him walk away.

_Stay Safe._


End file.
